


Poppies

by WhiteDamon



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War I, M/M, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 12:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16974582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteDamon/pseuds/WhiteDamon
Summary: Mike and Harvey went to War and fell in loveWWI AU in honor of the Armistice Centenary





	Poppies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harveylovesmike](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=harveylovesmike).



**_February 1916_ **

It was freezing, and damp, and muddy, and Harvey didn’t think he’ll ever feel warm and dry again. 

He would give about anything to be back in London, with his bachelor flat and his Law firm and his cars and his club.

But he stupidly volunteered back in 1914, when Lord fucking Kitchener, convinced overwhelming manpower would be decisive, set a nationwide campaign to encourage men to enlist. More than half his Oxford year joined by a few days–in corporate London, not to volunteer despite the ultra-patriotic atmosphere would have been a social suicide for Harvey, who had been famous for his athletic prowess as a student and his strong will as a young shark in London business. 

_The Hell_ , he had thought, _the whole bloody thing will last two months, three top_ \- maybe he would be back before he even set foot in France.

Right now thought, floundering with effort through his trench, his ears ringing from uninterrupted mortar fire, he wouldn’t care if the whole City shut him out and he had to emigrate to fucking USA. He had been cold for what felt like days (for what _was_ probably days), he hadn’t eaten since last night (because of course fucking f _ood provisions_ was vital for the troops, but apparently far less vital than fucking _ammo_ ), and he was to welcome the newly conscripted before they were all sent North to the Belgium frontier for God knew how long. 

Yeah, _three months top_. 

***

The men of the new battalion looked ridiculously young when he finally reached the third trench where they were waiting for him - from their brand-new, stupidly _clean_ uniforms to their wide-eyed terror at the sound of each mortar landing. 

Harvey squared his shoulders against the cold and the dread to send those kids to their death and lifted his chin.

“All right, rookies, I’m Captain Specter, your commanding officer from now on. We don’t have a lot of times before our German friends interrupt us with mortar, so let’s get over with it.”

Harvey went on explaining how things worked, trying to cover everything the rookies needed to know, from security measures to the newest army slangs, where were the cushiest trenches, how to identify enemy shells by size, effects and sound, how to enter the no-man's-land and sometimes come out alive and mostly whole. 

Ignoring the growing panic on the juvenile faces, he then grilled them back to make sure they got at the very least _part_ oh what he had just said.

After a few rounds of barely coherent babbling, it became painfully obvious most of them didn’t listen a fucking thing, _goddamnit._

“This could save your bloody life! Will you _fucking_ pay attention?”

That won him a round of stunned giggles–God _these children_ , heaven gave him strength. He resolutely didn’t think about Louis, who enlisted at the same time than him and used to rant about ‘ _utterly low-class and foul-mouthed louts–I certainly have nothing in common with them, Harvey, and find it difficult to put up with their wantonly pointless, witless and filthy conversation_.’

Even Louis wasn’t so sensitive now–as for Harvey, having never been a delicate flower, he sometimes genuinely scared himself with his fool mouth. 

“You, skinny,” he dryly called out one, “can you tell me anything about disciplinary sanctions for privates who didn’t listen to their officers?”

The soldier looked up. 

“My name is Mike Ross, Sir,” he retorted with a Londonian accent that put him somewhere between middle and working-class. 

“Do I sound like I want your name, or an answer, Private?” Harvey grinned through his teeth. 

He would not suffer any beginning of a suspicion of the slightest insubordination within his troops even if he had to break faces. 

The other man eyeballed him for a few seconds, and it struck Harvey at how both young and old Ross looked, with a ridiculously fresh face and sharp, clever blue eyes beyond his years. In truth he was probably just a few years younger than him, but he seemed more fragile than that, wrapped up in this goddamn uniform and shivering slightly in the cold breeze.

Then Ross cocked his head, did something ridiculous and funny with his eyebrows, and began reciting monotonously, _word by word,_ the _freaking Code of military justice._

_The fuck,_ Harvey thought.

It must have showed on his face, because Ross bursted out laughing - despite the cold, the mud and the fact that all the other soldiers edged away from him. 

“That’s a neat little party trick you’ve got here,” Harvey managed to shoot back. “You studied to enlist?” 

The mirth of the other man somehow subdued even as his eyes still danced with amusement. 

“No Sir. But let’s say I didn’t get kicked out of UCL for _failing_ exams. »

Harvey raised his eyebrows. 

" _Why_ exactly did you get kicked out of University College of London?”

The kid had the good grace to look embarrassed. 

“I sold the answers to tests I had memorized to other students, Sir. Including the son of the Dean.”

“Ah.”

“Ah indeed, Sir.”

_Wait a minute._

“Did you just say you used to memorize entire exams?”

“What I read, I understand, and what I understand, I remember forever”, the other man smiled cheekily. 

Harvey could feel himself smile in answer, but he couldn’t help it. "You little _punk_ ,” he muttered, sounding even at his own ears far too fond for some kid he met minutes ago.

Private Ross - Mike - only smiled wider. 

After a few more rounds of interrogation, Harvey indeed ascertained the kid was genius: even without the memory trick, his reasoning and analysis abilities alone took away Harvey’s breath. He also displayed a frankly impressive brass for such a slip of a man - which Harvey didn't find _charming_ in the slightest, of course, but some backbone would serve well in this hell on Earth.

He decided on the spot to keep this one around. He was a lot of things, but not a fool, and such a mind should be used adequately, preferably for Harvey’s profit and advantage, and not let to wither.

He also convinced himself the gorgeous blue eyes, sharp high-cheeks and soft looking hair that came with said mind had absolutely nothing to do with his decision.

******

**_November 2017_ **

Every day, despite everything, Mike couldn’t help feeling grateful for Captain Specter’s presence. 

He missed Grammy, and Jenny, and London, and Trevor’s death last December was a constant wound, a scab that would likely never fully healed, and he was _fighting a war_. 

But at least, when he woke up, Captain Specter - Harvey - would be there - implacably strong-willed, adamantly fair, uncompromisingly good, and stupidly handsome under the stinking uniform and the beard. 

For some reasons that Mike couldn’t fathom but was pitifully grateful all the same, Captain Specter had somehow made Mike his orderly. Mike waited on him, helped him with endless paperwork, maps and provisions lists and ammo and casualties, accompanied him at officers meetings back in the relative safety of the third trench, and stayed close to him all the time in case he wanted him to carry messages or orders. 

All day long, they would chat while wading around the trenches, laughing when someone managed to catch a rat, jokingly betting about how far this mortar would land ( _too close_ was always the answer, _far too close_ ) and moaning along with Canadians and Australians about the latest Imperial FU. 

They worked so well, together. 

Captain Specter was smart, but no book-smart like poor Captain Litt had been before his blighty - more like street-smart, for all his posh accent. He was hard and pushed his men firm, but he also quietly granted more permissions than all others officers put together, talked calmly to the ones with shell-shock syndrome instead of ignoring or scolding them, and once publicly argued with a general to get more field medics. (He _got_ _them_ through, and Mike had to make a significant effort to stop the awe and worship to show too openly on his face). 

As for him, Mike knew he was scrawny and all over the place, and he had no diploma, but he remembered everything and tried hard to get all that Harvey needed to help them survive, and most of the times, by some miracle, he made the right call. Harvey then rewarded him with a smile, or a friendly pat on his shoulder or even, in one memorable occasion, a muttered _« good boy »_ and. 

And.

(And Mike might love him more than anyone else in this world, except his grand-mother.)

Fraternization with officers was forbidden, of course it was. But the official word from the Higher ups had also been that the war would be over in three months. A year in the trenches had taken its toll. More than half of his regiment were dead already. Last month they sent home Kyle, the insufferable Cambridge prick who bragged about winning over single-handedly a German trench, with both his arms cut off by gangrene. Everything was dying around him. Mike was exhausted beyond words and decided to take whatever solace was available to him.

And solace, thy name was Harvey. 

Days were hard, between the lack of sleep, the diseases, the utter lack of hygiene and intimacy, and the always-present death. Everyday, the « Stand-to-Arms » and the obligation to be on high-alert for enemy attack woke them up half an hour before daylight. A few hours later, he broke fast, usually with Harvey, before starting their rounds of inspection, making sure trenches were tidied and soldiers and weapons cleaned as much as they could reasonably be. 

With the necessity to search each other for lice, thicks and fleas, there was soon no place for physical discomfort, even the most prudish soldiers cured of their modesty after a few months. Mike found he particularly suffered from the filth, maybe more so than the constant fire. Grammy raised him with a borderline obsession of cleanliness («  _Cleanliness is close to godliness_  », she used to say, and _Lord_ what wouldn’t Mike give to see her again?) and he couldn’t bear having to wear the same clothes for weeks. It got slightly better once Captain Specter showed him how to dry clean. 

(Mike tried not to stare the Captain’s body, muscles made all the more obvious by the fat-loss they suffered of. The war regimen made him transitioned visibly from a healthy strength to a more refined, stronger sinewy. Mike thought, with a not-small dose of self-loath, the Captain’s physic contrasted sharply with his own now border-line pitiful wiriness.

Mike tried not to stare too obviously but he wasn’t sure he managed that)

Mike would then try to sleep between dinner at noon and tea at five pm, a mostly useless endeavor between the daylight and the fire. 

Dinners were a grand affair, between the stupid ceremonial of the Imperial military and the increasingly difficult search for food. Usually, even officers stoically ate Army-allowance rations, but sometimes Mike managed to obtain eggs, not-yet rotten meat or even fresh vegetables and to get them into Captain Specter’s plate. After all, that was his duty as an orderly to keep his officer well-fed and functional enough not to kill them on the battlefield.

(The grateful smile of said officer, the way he would cut Mike’s offerings into the smallest pieces and eat them almost unbearably slowly, visibly appreciating them, and how he somehow managed to sneak a significant part of it _back into Mike’s plate_ made the efforts more than worth it.)

After his long day, the evening Stand-to-Arms would then bring Mike to the night shift. 

Night shifts are the worst - and the best. 

In the still silence of the dark, he could hear every breath of sleeping men, the moaning of the wounded that couldn’t find rest, the scratching sound of rats’ legs.

But at night, he would sit close to Harvey, pressed against him from shoulder to hip - ostensibly to share body warm, and if Mike burrowed under the Captain’s arm slightly more deeply than strictly necessary (or appropriate), well, the other man never protested. 

Instead, he quizzed Mike about everything he could think of - US tax code, Imperial trade data, classical literature, British solicitors’ code of ethics, French constitutional history, the labour code, commercial law, civil law, public health regulations, insurance regulations, trade law, even the goddamn _countryside code_. 

“This is ridiculous!”, he would whisper in protest each time it happened.

He couldn’t get enough of it - enough of Harvey. 

“It will serve you well when we come back”, Captain Specter claimed without mercy before engaging him back in a heated debate about _Netherlands Navy_ _strategy in_ _Taiwan_ and _seriously_?

(Captain Specter never said _if we come back_ , only _when_ , with such assurance that Mike couldn’t help believing him. He hated him for that, for giving him hope - most of the times, he was just grateful.)

_Get a grip_ , he desperately admonished himself. Captain Specter was a solicitor, brilliant and successful back home, and the most eligible bachelor in their entire trench. While Mike… well, Mike was already nobody _before_ the War, even less now. An unwashed, smelly body among countless walking corpses slowly sinking in the shallow, muddy water of the trenches. 

Captain Specter was also male, which in itself was another rather unexpected bother. 

Even if he had never been with a man, had never fancied a man, even in the most private place of his mind, and even if he wasn’t able to identify or even put in words the emotions this situation provoked in him, the sheer physicality of Harvey awoke something within him, something both positive and sensual.

This turn of events frightened Mike : he’d never had a reason to question his sexual feelings until that moment, having ever only looked and fallen for women. 

But...it was Captain Specter. And Mike adored him beyond words, so discovering that his feelings, including physical ones, for the man probably went beyond friendship, was both not totally unexpected and scared the daylight out of Mike.

***

“CHARGE!!!”, the general’s orderly screamed. 

“Get your rifles, and jump out.“ Captain Specter ordered quietly, but somehow even more commanding. 

Mike, along with the others, obeyed immediately, even if his heart was racing with adrenaline and panic.

Historically, charges thought the no-man's-land had been distinctly unsuccessful, leading them to win back only a few negligible meters on the Germans, but the general staff kept sending them running under fire to try to « regain ground ». 

_Good Lord_ , screw them all. 

As soon as he got above the sandbags on top of the trench, Mike ran, trying not to think of the relative security he left behind. All the men were running too, which comforted him, until the closest to him - Thomas, he remembered, of course he did - got mowed down by machine-fire. 

“They spotted us!” Harvey’s voice yelled, “take cover!”

_Cover, who is he kidding, where on Earth did he think we can get co…_

Mike felt a hand grabbing him roughly from behind, and he got thrown face first forward. His shoulder hit the ground, a sharp pain spreading instantly thought his all side. Thinking of a German, he opened his mouth to yell, but another body landed on him, effectively, he realized, covering him form rifles fire. 

“Don’t you move, _bloody hell!”_

_“Captain?!”_

**_“_** Don’t move, we need to stay low to keep out of sight”, the other man repeated more calmly, his voice trembling slightly. That caused Mike to turn his head to try to look at him, feeling the irrepressible urge to… What? Comfort him? 

He could hear the horrible sounds of the fight, but not actually see it - the Captain had thrown them into a mortar impact hole in the ground, he realized with a flash of abject relief, just large enough for two men, maybe a meter deep, enough to hide them from the enemy fire. 

His mind slightly cleared, Mike lowered his head and rested his cheek on the damp, freshly stirred ground. 

For a long moment, they waited, pressed together, until the sound of fire diminished, the air growing in comparison thick with smoke, ash and embers, the remains of another battle. 

« I think we’re in the clear, let’s try to…, » Harvey began before an enormous bomb explosion cut him off.

The ground trembled as never before, and Mike screamed. 

_I’m going to die_ , he thought helplessly, desperately, _I’m going to die here, in the French mud of the Somme, in a fucking mortal shell hole, hiding like a rat at 25, alone and freezing and without seeing Grammy again and without even telling Harvey that…_

_That what?_

At this precise moment, he heard, between two rounds of the deafening thunder, Harvey making a gasping sound, like he was dying - _oh God, was Harvey dying -_ he has noticed nothing but shrapnel was so tricky - _Lord he didn’t want to see Harvey die - let him die before let him_

Harvey grabbed him by the collar and raised his face from where he had burrowed it in the other man’s coat, guiding it so they would face and

He kissed him.

His lips were cold, and chapped from the lack of water and the wind, the bomb were falling all around their hole, anyone could see them and send them to the martial court. They were still dying, walking corpses in the French mud of the Somme. 

It was the best kiss of Mike’s life.

“Oh God”, he gasped when his mouth left Harvey’s, “You…”

“You”, Harvey began, licking his lips. A closer impact interrupted him, soil splashes flying around and on them both. Mike cried in alarm. Harvey leaped, throwing himself a bit more above Mike. 

“You”, he tried again once the sound died after a few seconds, “you said that _out loud_!”

_“OH GOD-”_

“I, I value you too.”

Mike couldn’t believe his ears. Maybe a bullet _did_ hit him and this was… 

“Are you…? We’re on goddamn field, and you’re telling me that… Aren’t you… disgusted?”

“Do you think we have time for that? To hesitate? To be disgusted or sickened or, or not to get a fucking single good thing while we fucking can?”

“Captain. _Harvey,”_ Mike could feel the hand still on his nape, now curling gently around his neck while the other man pressed their cheeks together. 

“We will be dead before tonight, Mike. I can’t die before I tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Mike whispered in answer, “please, _I beg you,_ tell me _what?_ ”

“You know, Mike.”

And miraculously, Mike realized he did, his heart beating wildly in his chest. 

It was so clear, suddenly, as their lives were coming to an end, and nothing matters anymore anyway - nor their sexes, nor their status, nor their riches, nothing. 

_How thrilling and strange_ , Mike thought wildly, fighting back tears, _to be both deliriously happy and at Death’s gate._

“I do. And you know?”

“I know,” Harvey answered before kissing him again, for what was probably the last time. 

******

**_February 1918_ **

_Somehow,_ Harvey thought desperately, _it would have been easier if they had died then_. 

A few months later, their unity was finally on the move - the Allied armies having at last left trenches behind to move forward to Belgium and Germany. 

The constant moves and the frenzy that resulted of this turn of the war immensely helped Harvey to ignore his way through the awful awkwardness that followed his lamentable outburst during the battle in the no-man's-land. 

After he helped Mike to limp back to their lines, once a doctor had bandaged and cleared the younger man, the frantic need to make sure his boy was safe lessened and left Harvey strangely bereft at first, and then completely panicked. 

He had kissed Mike - his goddamn _orderly_ \- who had _kissed him back_ \- _surely_ he would have protested if - _only what if he thought he couldn’t refuse._

Things had seemed so _limpid_ to Harvey, so _perfectly clear_ \- Mike and him, this kiss in the mortar hole that had been an epiphany, a wonderful, all-encompassing experience of the sudden and striking realization they understood each other more than anyone before them did and after them will ( _You know_.). The feeling that Mike was a part of him - _the best part_ , with his endless blue eyes and his beautiful mind and his bottomless empathy for others, and Harvey will give him pretty much anything he wanted without it even feeling like an obligation…

But the day after, the thought of having had his way with Mike when he was unwilling, merely doing his duty because he had no choice, or because he was out of his mind, turned Harvey’s stomach. The reality was in his far too recent past, his years in Oxford, when he had discrete flings with both women and men : affairs with the same sex were tolerated, as long as carefully hidden, with the common knowledge it would remain a onetime thing, a juvenile affair that would quickly fade into adulthood and marriage.

Affairs with others men had always been about share carnal pleasure, not about feelings. 

Worse, Mike was his man, his guy, to be respected as a fellow soldier, a brilliant mind, someday an esteemed colleague if Harvey managed to survive long enough to feed an Oxford diploma down Mike’s throat and haul him by force if needed into Slaughter and May. Mike was not to be tumbled in his bed, or on the desk in his temporary offices, or any other available flat surface, whenever he took a notion.

This notion was greatly helped, in the few weeks after Mike’s injury, by the fact that the other man became quickly inseparable with the pretty nurse who had bandaged him into health. Harvey would search for Mike to make an errand, and he would invariably find him in the infirmary, chatting and laughing with nurse Rachel and wasn’t that _sickeningly sweet_ , the wounded warrior and the lovely nurse? 

It could only be a fine thing, Harvey thought, to find that Mike also desired women, it would help him get over his fancy, but to have so little control over himself that he can scarcely keep away from him for more than a few hours was a poor thing indeed. 

Harvey realized during those days, horrified, that he couldn’t stay away of Mike. Even if he could feel himself rigid and short with the man - _all tension, awkwardness, stilted conversation instead of their usual fluid rhythm, so comically out of synch as they were_ -, he still looked out for him, his presence both a stress and a balm to Harvey’s soul.  

***

Their new routine of tensed professional exchanges and uneasy personal ones could have lasted until the end of the war without Mike’s valiance, who ambushed him one evening in a deserted hallway, on his way to his own apartment. 

“I can’t talk to you, private.” 

“Feels like you never can those days, sir.” Finally face to face, Mike was so close in the narrow corridor Harvey could feel the warm of his body. 

“Are you…?” Mike hesitated, some of his resolve seeming to disappear, “Don’t you want to see me anymore? Do you… regret, Sir?”

He didn’t precise what was to regret, but he didn’t need to. 

Harvey grinned his teeth. 

“I’ve regretted nothing I’ve done in my bloody life, private, but I… Might understand if you did.”

“What? What are you tal…”

“May I advise you,” Harvey cut him off, “to find someone else to talk to, like Nurse Rachel?”

Mike looked at him as if he has gone mad and bursted out laughing. 

“Lady Rachel", he managed between sniggers, "is happily engaged to Lord Logan, currently fighting in Flandres. For your perfect information, our main topics of conversations are him, you, and the current state of the Suffragette movement.”

Only years of practice bullshiting his way through Oxford and London saved Harvey from stuttering in positive embarrassment in front of a smiling Mike. 

“Now we have sorted this out, will you stop shutting me out?”

“I,” Harvey started to protest, but realized that he had. 

“Neither do I, you know. Regret.”

Mike’s eyes were big and endlessly blue and earnest, and Mike’s hand searched and, with only a slight tremor, gently squeezed his. 

_God above_ , Mike was truly braver than him, the bravery to try to reach out, to be true to his feelings at the risk of being rejected or _worst_.

Harvey did the least he could, and squeezed back, which made Mike relax instantly, relief and happiness beaming on his face. 

“I’m glad, “ Harvey managed thought his suddenly tight throat. 

***

After that, everything went back to normal - or as much as things could be normal in wartimes - but _everything changed_.

There has been no more… contacts outside of the ordinary, nothing that could land them into trouble - but all the same, the mutual admission of their feelings transformed everything. 

They still spent as much time together as they could, both during shifts and for whatever few leisure times they had. They talked about Harvey’s cases back home – Mike listening to him, fascinated and attentive, and peppering their conversation with so many brilliant remarks that Harvey couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to work along Mike, with Mike. They ate together, read papers together, and Harvey managed to get them close accommodations in every temporary headquarter they were set up, citing practicality and his need to keep his orderly close (he hoped no-one suspected anything but couldn’t stop himself). 

They sometimes drank tea together in Harvey’s private rooms, in the afternoon, to ease the pain and the dread, or to celebrate when Mike did exceptionally well. 

He knew Mike appreciated the acknowledgement, but this was his favorite part of the week as well. The long hours of easy banter in his room, the way Harvey couldn’t help but let Mike in, even a little. These precious few moments when he didn’t need to maintain his façade of unflappable confidence. Harvey might be a lonely man by choice and design, but even he was self-aware enough to recognize the need of human connexions in their endless stream of deaths and battle fire. 

( _Who was he kidding : his need of Mike._ )

The day this newfound, sweet equilibrium changed again, they had been drinking a delicious Indian blend that Mike had somehow managed to get from an indigenous soldier. Even Harvey’s honest appreciation and the energizing power of the warm liquid hadn’t been enough to stir Mike out of a strange lethargy that had plagued him for a few days now. 

When Mike failed to answer him, Harvey smiled at him and said, “More tea is in order, I think, if I’m so dull I fail to keep your attention.”

That seemed to wake Mike up, the other man straightening in his chair. 

“It isn’t the company, Sir, I promise.”

“That was a joke, Private, I know the day was long.”

Harvey started to rise to get the teapot on the table himself but Mike grabbed his sleeve, causing him to sit back down. “Yes?”

“Our rooms are right next to each other. Can I, » he licked his lips, « come to you tonight?”

_Oh God._

Harvey shallowed. 

“Mike…” 

“I know you want… me. This. And I know it’s dangerous but… As you said, we live in such uncertain times that we have to get every good thing we can. Seeing that you’re one of them, I would like to… that is, if you want to. I… understand that being with… that men could be… But if you sometimes make exceptions for… you know, I would beg you to… make me an exception.”

Mike’s face was red, blotchy patches high on his cheeks, but he never hesitated, his eyes never leaving Harvey’s.

He had never looked so beautiful to Harvey. 

“I don’t disagree.” Mike seemed to deflate in relief. Harvey glanced at the door. “It would be better if you came just before curfew. We could say it was about last-minute information that required immediate attention.”

“That would be lying.” 

“You risked enough.”

“I would have risked more, Sir.” His voice was soft, as if they were confessing secrets to each other.

“So would I.” Harvey’s voice was just as quiet. “And Mike, if we are — well, if we are to do this sort of things, I think you should probably call me Harvey.”

***

It was just after eleven and the hallway was deserted when Mike came knocking quietly at his door. 

Harvey had been pacing for what seemed hours in his rooms, worried sick about both Mike getting caught and Mike not coming, but it felt all worth the wait and the bile, the way Mike’s face lit up when he opened the door. 

With just a glance to make certain no one was around, he closed the door.

“I worried you wouldn’t let me come in, and all I’d have to keep me company would be Tess d'Urbervilles.” Mike joked, reading his way through Hardy at the time.

Harvey smiled, suddenly less nervous - he still didn’t make a move to get closer to Mike ** _._**

“Would you like some drink? What about some good old English beer?” 

That made Mike’s eyes widen as he sat down. « How did you get _that_?”

“I too have my way to close deals,” Harvey teased while pouring them two glasses.

They drank in silence until Mike, clearly a bundle of nerves, rise up suddenly, closed the distance between them in a few seconds, and, bending down, kissed Harvey as if it was a goddamn offensive against the Germans.  
“Wow!”

Mike retreated immediately, panic on his face.

“Sorry! I’m sorry, _Lord_ , I thought-“

“It’s okay,” Harvey reassured him, “but… Mike, we have time. You don’t need to hurry up, or do anything you don’t want.”

Mike considered that, staring at him in a most unnerving manner.

“I“, he licked his lips again, goddammit, “I know what I want, just…”

He cut himself short, wide-eyed and already out of breath. Harvey decided some directions were clearly needed.

“Come here,” he said rising up as well, and opening his arms.

Mike didn’t hesitate this time either, God bless him, stepping right into his embrace.

Harvey hugged him tight, savouring at last his shape and smell, until he felt him relax against him. He grabbed his chin firmly and kissed him - right this time, hot and wet and slow, licking into Mike’s mouth and _God did that feel good_.

They were pressed so tightly together he was sure Mike could feel his heaving breath and his tensing muscles. Through the haze of booze and desire, he worried suddenly - _was he pushing Mike_

Then Mike – _this miracle_ – chucked like _a fool_.

“Sir, I sure hope you know what you’re doing, because I absolutely don’t.” 

Dumbfounded, Harvey stepped away just enough to look at his face – there was no shame or hesitation, just honest desire and good humor, the best mix for good love-making.

Harvey laughed too - in relief, in frenzied love - and marvelled how Mike made him more at ease in a few words, both humbled and awed by his fearlessness.

“You’re a wonder,” he whispered before ducking to kiss him again.

Mike made a sweet truncated sound of denial.

“Am not,” he protested weakly, his pupils blown enormous, his face warm and red.

“You _are_ “, Harvey insisted, nuzzling his cheek, his hands slowly descending to wrap around Mike’s waist, just above his behind. “You’re wonderful, and brilliant, and _I want to keep you_.”

_That_ got him an adorable little moan of a sob, which made him hot all over - Harvey had come to terms a long time ago with the fact he didn’t love like normal, _nice_ men did, and to have Mike answered his possessiveness his way…

“Kiss me again, _please_ ”, Mike begged politely - such good manners, for all his brass.

Even if he didn’t usually like orders, Harvey was happy to oblige this time.

******

**_Day before Christmas Eve 1918_ **

The ink on the Armistice was barely dry, and Mike was walking down London streets under the snow to Harvey’s address.

To be truthful, he wasn’t even sure why he had decided to go see him. They haven’t seen each other for two months, since their separate journeys home. Harvey, as an officer, had stayed behind a few more days to organize the safe troops’ return.

They have been so busy - in the general euphoria of the peace (celebrations with booze and songs in public and heated kisses in private, _so sweet th_ _ey made Mike’s toes curled into his booths_ ), Harvey barely had enough time to slip him a paper with his place written down and a hurried “come see me when we’re back to London”.

Mike had come back safely and somehow fulled of home. They had talked about the future, about him getting a job in Slaugther and May, about Harvey sponsoring him into a Law diploma and the legal profession.

That all sounded so lovely yet so simple back then.

It all came crashing down when he came home to an empty house.

Grammy had died a few days before his return, just long enough to know he had survived and was about to come back – Mike tried not to be furious at such unfairness. She hadn’t suffered, their neighbours assured him, just went into her sleep (cold and alone, after putting into the ground her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law and having sent her grandson to war). 

Between the burial, clearing out and selling their house, dealing with what was left at Trevor and Jenny’s too (and _Hell_ if going through their things made him feel as if his heart was breaking into pieces), he didn’t have the time to blink and weeks have already passed. Without him having gotten around sending a message to Harvey, and without receiving any from the other man.

Mike couldn’t help wondering whether it has been a fluke, a wartime fling, too beautiful to be true. The dreamlike, ethereal quality of his souvenirs only reinforced this feeling.

Did Harvey forget about Mike? Did he rethink the whole… their whole thing now that they were back? That would be not only logical, but also sensible of him – even without the… same sex thing, the glaring class difference only would justify Harvey taking his distance with Mike.

Mike had nothing better to do anyway, even thought it was the day before Christmas Eve (it’s not like he had anyone or anything else left now), so he figured he could as well try before … Before what?

He was thinking about America, reading about New York and California instead of searching for a job. It would be far easier now to find employment anyway, here or there – with so many men dead or wounded or crippled, there was no shortage of positions to fill…

( _He knew, deep down, that he would never leave England, or even London._

_London was all his childhood memories, his boy schools and the first shop where he worked to help Grammy pay the bills, the pubs and the taverns and the places where Trevor and he cheered musicians in summer._

_London was Benthal Green Library where he spend hours reading his way through classics, his parents’ grave, Grammy’s church, University College London on which steps he would sometimes sit for hours thinking of what could have been._

_Even now, that everyone was gone and London was full of strangers, he would never be able to leave._ )

***

Of course, Harvey lived in a beautiful, brand-new Edwardian Baroque building in a posh neighborhood. Even as he rang the doorbell, Mike was acutely aware he didn’t fit there.

After having explained into the intercom (an intercom, Dear God, how excitedly modern) he was a veteran from Mr Specter’s regiment, and before he could even say who he was, a female voice imperiously commanded him to climb up third story. Once he got then, one of the two doors of the floor was open and a stunning redhead woman with bright eyes and a beautiful green outifit was waiting for him.

She stared at him for about two seconds before a large grin took over her face.

“You’re the infamous Mike.”

Mike stuttered like an idiot. 

“What?…I know I didn’t tell you my name!”

“I’m _Donna_ ,” the redhead – Donna – replied without missing a beat, face supremely unconcerned, as if that explained everything. (Later, once he got to know and love Donna as a long-lost sister, Mike would realize it _did_ explain everything).

“Please come in, Harvey will be pleased to see you, even if he probably wouldn’t say so, the fool.”

Considerably unsettled ( _why_ wouldn’t he…? And did Harvey know his _house_ _help_ went around casually insulting him?), Mike followed her through an elegant hall and down a corridor filled with paintings that cost probably more than himself, to a magnificent front room where sat in the most comfortable-looking armchair he has ever seen…

Harvey.

Beautiful, handsome, clean-shaved and perfectly styled haired Harvey, in dark expensive city clothes rather than a filthy uniform, who rose as soon as he saw Mike.

“Mike. You came. I wasn’t sure you…”

“Harvey. _Harvey_.” Mike couldn’t help the tears in his voice.

He barely heard the door closing behind the woman, just as Harvey crossed over the room in a few steps, made slower by the injury he got just before the Armistice, a slight limp that would probably never fully disappeared.

He was the most single beautiful thing Mike has even seen.

He opened his arms, Mike dived into them with abject relief and they hugged tightly enough for it to hurt.

Mike wanted to never let go – he suspected, from the strength of his grip that neither did Harvey. 

“You come back to me.”

“I told you I would, wouldn’t I?” God, his voice still wavered. “When did you come back?”

Harvey finally stepped back far enough to take a look at his face.

“I’ve been in England for five weeks, in London for two days.”

“Where did you go before?”

Harvey opened his mouth but was interrupted by high pitched noises from another room, children’s voices.

_Children’s voices._

Mike tensed immediately, and Harvey’s arms fell from around him.

“Do you… Are those your children? Are you, _Good Lord_ is Donna your _wife_?!”

Harvey, whose face had gone grim, focused back on Mike long enough to look deeply offended.

“Do you think so little of me? That I would have started _anything_ with you if I had had a goddamn family back home?”

“You wouldn’t have been the first.”

“Fair enough. I probably own you an explanation, at least.”

He gestured Mike towards his left.

“Could you get my stick, please? Donna!” He called louder.

Before he even finished pronouncing her name, the woman flounced in. Without slowing down, she bypassed Mike, grabbed a beautiful wooden cane resting on the side of the armchair, and brought it to Harvey.

“Thank you, Donna. Please, may you…”

“See to the children?”

“And…”

“Get you some strong tea for your boy and brandy for you?”

“Also…”

“Is he staying over for dinner?”

That got her a glare.

 “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“I will make sure we serve an adequate feast,” the woman kept going, basically ignoring her… Ignoring _Harvey_.

“We will be in my office.”

Mike was probably gapping at this point. Harvey looked perfectly unfazed as he dragged him into a gorgeous dark wainscoting office, whose three of the four walls were covered floor to ceiling in books.

Mike tried hard to do the polite thing and not to immediately check out the titles as Harvey sat down the colossal bureau (clearly his flair for theatrics extended to home furniture) and gestured Mike to imitate him in the chair facing him.

“Let's make perfectly clear that Donna is not my wife. She has been my secretary and general ruler of my life for more than a decade, and she’s far too clever to agree to marry me, even if I was brave enough to propose.”

“Oh. Alright.”

Mike didn’t dare ask, but Harvey, a muscle clenching in his jaw, broached the other topic himself.

“What you just heard weren’t my children either. There are my brother’s.”

Mike inhaled sharply, suddenly understanding what it implied.

“He got drafted in the RAF. Became an as quickly, he was that good.”

“Five successful targets”, Mike whispered

“Twenty two, actually. The twenty third…”, Harvey closed his eyes, « the twenty third got him above Greece."

“I’m so sorry, Harvey.”

Harvey kept going after a silence.

“His wife, my sister-in-law, got sick last winter. I didn't know, didn't plan for any of this. Her relatives wrote to me they couldn’t keep them, and my mother and her… companion are obviously out of question."

“What are their names?”

“Alice is five, born just before the War. Richard is three. They seem to be good fellows.”

”I’m sure they are.”

Harvey kept going after a silence, clearly dreading what was coming.

”We have…made a lot of plans during the war.”

Mike shadowed against the bile and the grief and nodded, firmly decided not to make it difficult for Harvey by tears or a ludicrous scene.  
After all, he knew what would happened before he even came.

"As my situation has changed, I believe it’s time to revise those."

"Of course." Mike wouldn't yell, he wouldn't. "I understand that you don't want to associate yourself with me or give me references, and…"

"What? No, Lord, Mike! I didn't mean that part! Of course I will sponsor you and have Slaughter and May hire you right away as soon as you finish your schooling. That had nothing to do with it!"

Mike's utter confusion must have showed on his face.

"I meant the… our more personal arrangement," Harvey clarified with visible effort.

Mike felt the faint beginning of something he almost didn't recognize. Hope.

"You think I don't want you anymore."

"I'm a crippled with two wards, half my colleagues and network are dead. I will have to work twice harder to regain my influence, and I will not send my nephews away, Mike - I will make right to them. I would understand if _you_ don’t want anything to do with me."

At this precise moment, Mike understood he didn’t know Harvey, not really.

He sensed Harvey still missed his father like a lost limb some days, even after years. He knew the two reasons he pushed himself so hard were to prove himself he could succeed and not to let down M. Pearson, who had given him his chance at his beginning. He could redraw by memory the shape of his nose and the precise emplacement of the two moles on his forehead.

He knew his entire career and his most important cases, the models of his favorite cars, the way he looked so handsome even in a two-weeks old uniform, the best score he ever got on a cricket terrain.

He knew exactly how to kiss the hollow of his throat to make his breath hitch.

But so far, Mike didn’t really _get_ the most single important thing to know about Harvey : his kind, loyal heart, the one he needed to protect by shutting out the rest of the world, except for the ones he accidentally let in. For _those_ ones, Harvey would do anything, including taking in the children of the brother who had spurned him in their youth. Including refusing a better, twice more paid position in another firm.

Including pushing Mike away if he has convinced himself it was better for him.

_Donna was right_ , he marvelled for the first time (God knows it won’t be the last). "You, Sir," he stated slowly, deliberately, "are the most stupid self-sacrificing fool this side of the Channel".

Harvey’s brows knitted dangerously. "What did you just say to me?"

"Grammy died just before the end of the war. Jenny, my friend Trevor’s wife, died too, their house burnt in a bombing last spring."

Harvey, after visibly resisting the impulse for about three seconds, grabbed his hand across the desk and squeezed it tight.

"I’m so sorry, Mike. If I can do anything…"

“It’s fine. Or it will be," Mike interrupted him, resigned. He felt calm, dignified somehow, as if his resolve and Harvey's presence allowed him to draw strength from his grief, rather than weakness. “What I mean is. I’m alone, Harvey. I’m more alone that I have ever been in my entire existence, and I feel like the only other real person in this forsaking world is you. If you genuinely don't want me anymore, I will go away for good. But don’t push me away because you think you know better."

He licked his lips. Harvey followed the movement as if he couldn’t tear his eyes away. “It’s as you said it once. We can't afford not to get any good thing while we still can. Do you believe it to be any less true now that we’re back?"

"I do," Harvey finally replied, his voice like gravel, without having let go of Mike's hand.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I do know better. It will be hard, Mike. It, it won’t be like in wartime. We will have to…to hide, and lie, and live together in secrecy. You will have to give up life as you knew it, as society would never accept such an arrangement. For God sake, you will never raise you own child!"

"Apparently, you got us in the family way already," Mike joked.

"Motherfucking…!" Harvey stood up in his helpless fury. "Mike, how long do you think you can handle this?!"

Mike stood up as well, facing a flaring-nostril Harvey with deadly calm.

"If _this_ mean I can have you? As long as I live." It sounded as a promise, a vow. Harvey looked stunned. "Or until you don’t want me anymore », he amended. That seemed to deplete Harvey's outburst.

"I’m not sure _that_ will ever happen. I’m… you need to be made aware that I’m pretty much a lost cause when it comes to you."

Admitting it seemed to cause Harvey physical pain - Mike would probably take offense if it wasn't so typically sweet of Harvey to so strongly resist something that could make him happy at someone else's expense.

Hope kept swelling under his breast.

“I still have no diploma,” he reminded the other man as he approached him carefully. "I'm still a nobody."

“I still don’t care,” Harvey shot back, his eyes finally _finally_ crinkling into a cautious smile, leaning back against the desk.

"I'm not going to leave," Mike kept warning as he wrapped his arms around the other man's powerful neck.

"I don't think I would have the strength to let you," Harvey whispered back against his mouth.

Mike cut him off with a kiss, hot and wet and slow and _at long last_.

Harvey pulled back, leaving Mike slightly short of breath, his expression intense and assessing, hopeful too. "Are you worried?"

"I am, of course I am" Mike answered honestly, "but I'm sure."

Harvey's grip on his waist tightened briefly, before releasing him, his hands moving up to frame his nape, Harvey's thumps skimming softly over his high cheeks. "Then you're cordially invited to join the Specter household for dinner."

Forever, he didn't say, but they both heard.

Harvey's hands a heady, warm weight on his face, Mike thought of freshly-fallen snow covering a desolate landscape with beauty, of Christmas spent with family, of long-lasting love, and smiled. "What a nice invitation. I think I will stay."

******

**Author's Note:**

> English isn't my first, my second or my third language, so writing this was both a pleasure and a challenge. I hope I didn't butcher the language too much.  
> I had a lot of fun using UK English and trenches slang.
> 
> During World War I, there were four distinct British armies who mainly fought in the Western Front in France and Belgium against the German Empire:  
> \- The first comprised approximately 247,000 soldiers of the regular army  
> \- The second army was provided by the approximately 246,000-strong Territorial Force, initially allocated to home defence but used to reinforce the regular army after it suffered heavy losses in the opening battles of the war.  
> \- The third army was Kitchener's Army, comprising men who answered Lord Herbert Kitchener's call for volunteers in 1914–1915 ; Harvey, as a former member of a Public School, joined one of the famous « Pals battalions », and was promoted to officer in the field.  
> \- The fourth army was the reinforcement of existing formations with conscripts after the introduc-tion of compulsory service in January 1916 by the Military service Bill ; that’s Mike and Trevor.
> 
> Slaugther and May was and still is one of the main UK Law firms. 
> 
> The quote of Louis Litt about swear words in the trenches is from the letters of Donald McNair, WWI Veteran.


End file.
